Is it worth it?

I served 3 tours in Germany, a total just barely short of 9 years. During those years, duty and time permitting my wife, son and I were able to see some of Europe. In 1988 or thereabouts, we booked a tour to Holland’s Tulip festival. A tour of Amsterdam preceded the Tulip Festival. Aside from Anne Franke’s house and a boat ride through the canals, the remainder of the Amsterdam tour was quite enlightening as to what post-Christian means. I see that clearer now than I did during a trip nearly thirty years past.

I remember being in Amsterdam’s Dam Square beside their National War Memorial. The stench was quite bad. It smelled like a giant urinal. Graffiti covered buildings were visible in every direction. Not the reverence I would expect a country to pay a war memorial. It was not the place to take your family.

No Amsterdam tour is complete without a walking tour of the Red Light district. Picture windows line the streets and in those red lit windows sit prostitutes advertising their wares leaving little to the imagination. Also along those streets are the drug bars. Legal of course. Then there are the bars with explicit signage advertising their live shows and before a youngster can ask his dad what that means, a sleazy looking street hawker clears up all doubt. Probably a great location for a rainbow colored Whitehouse. The Red Light district was packed with tourists. There was no line at Anne Franke’s house.

I cannot imagine that Biblical Sodom was much different from this place. With our country’s accelerated drive toward moral relativism, legalization of drugs, and a push toward a Post-Christian America one can but wonder how long before Hometown America begins to mimic Amsterdam.

I was reading some C. S. Lewis thoughts on what he termed Post-Christian Europe and Post-Christian man. To summarize it into my own words, he surmised rather clearly that Christian man had much more in common with the Pre-Christian pagan than he does with the Post-Christian man. At least the pagan and the Christian alike adhered to natural law.

Riding the tour bus out of Amsterdam, if I saw a structure that was not covered with graffiti I do not remember it. It is one of the images that remain in my mind. Leaving the city and entering a rather pristine countryside covered with tulip fields drew a stark contrast. It was like two separate worlds, connected by language but little else.

Here in America, we are even losing the language connection and like every other assault on anything distinctly American that too is purposeful.

I received an email following last week’s post and someone ask me what are we supposed to do about all this change. “How do we fight it?” The undertone of sheer frustration was obvious in the email.

There is only one thing each person can do. It starts by knowing what you believe. Knowing the source of the truth that is the foundation of what you believe. And having the fortitude and willingness to stand firm regardless of the consequences.

Understand and hold firm that man did not give us freedom; therefore man cannot alter our path or take away our freedom. Freedom cannot be taken it can only be forfeited.

In the service, each person knew of the obligation to refuse to carry out an illegal order. In our 50 states, we must have leaders who know when a Supreme Court decision has no basis in law or in the Constitution and who have the fortitude to challenge it – disobey it. We have too few willing to stand up.

At some point, each of us will have to decide if it is worth it. Worth it to go into the streets in mass and stand up for what is right and to keep our country free. Red, White and Blue are the only colors that should ever light “our” Whitehouse.